The junior crew of Tsunami RT has debuted at German endurance VLN cup employing quite an unusual crew. Considering pre-season test results, the team has came to the conclusion that 18 years old Kirill Chmykh is yet to prepare for racing such a complicated and dangerous track as Nürburgring – Nordschleife is. Thus, the team needed the substitute for Kharkov born, and this substitute was found in the person of Russian Nikolay Zhuravlev. Despite the tender age of 21, the Kaliningrad born own serious experience of multy-hours marathon racing – his portfolio lists two 24H races at Dubai, 1000 km race at Lithuanian Palanga as well as Hungaroring 12H.

The newly created crew debuted at the very first stage of VLN Championship having Ford Fiesta ST car at their disposal. Showing stable performance at qualifying, Aleksey and Nikolay reached fourth result at SP2, and, during the race mastered it to P3 by accomplishing the race at the podium within the class. As it was declared by team Principal Irina Kolomeytseva, this crew is to race at least one more time for the team to take the decision if to prolong the contract with Nikolay Zhuravlev.

Irina Kolomeytseva, Tsunami RT Principal:

“Due to his age, Nikolay Zhuravlev is valued as the teams’ prominent diver for a while; but nobody kept his eye on him specially, as there was no necessity. But when such necessity arose, I recollected, that there’s a guy and he is just 21. I studied his Dubai onboard video, where he drove Aston Martin and was satisfied with all I have seen. In today’s case we made our mind to test him at Nordschleife and I can say, liked his awareness of the thing. It’s yet early to speak of his real Nürburgring speed – this time he was slower than Aleksey Yatsyuk, but this is the reason of lack of experience of this track. We shall grant him with a possibility to test Nordschleife thoroughly before the next VLN Championship, and shall see if the results improve. It’s early to call it long term cooperation – this decision shall be taken only after his second VLN race”.

Aleksey Yatsyuk, Tsunami RT pilot:

“One of the major difficulties in the race, where cars of miscellaneous classes are presented at the same time is to race your own and keep watching faster cars in rear mirrors in order not to spoil their day. I tried to fight with one of the contestants in my class at the beginning of the race, and, while following him, noticed, that he loses less than me when letting faster cars go by. Closer to race finale, I figured out at what combination of turns it is possible to stay at pace and at which places I’d better move aside. I think, with the time I shall get along with it, but at first I tried to let faster cars go by comfortably, in order to exclude any possible incidents. Our main target was to accomplish the race – and we did it”.

Photo: Werner Röder